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Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

123 points by markovian 7y ago

I am trying to find the ideal way to start a space business without immediately needing substantial financial resources. Create a space industry giant from scratch with little external funding.

PaulHoule 7y ago
Cubesats?
- markovian 7y ago
  For what purpose? Telecommunications?
  - sfifs 7y ago
    Rich hobbyists - like the businesses that specialize in model trains
boznz 7y ago
Why not wait until people are out there already and sell shovels
- greenyoda 7y ago
  1. It may take many years before significant number of people are out there. 2. What kind of equipment or services would these "shovels" be? Is there any kind of equipment used in space that could be produced by a bootstrapped company that doesn't have billions of dollars in funding? Why would a new company in this business succeed when competing against established companies that already have experience producing such equipment?
  - boznz 7y ago
    1. Plenty of time to prepare then. 2. frankly sir I dont have a clue! maybe a space escort service as space will probably be full of young men with lots of money :-)
troydavis 7y ago
Could you share why bootstrapping this business is attractive? I’ve bootstrapped many companies, but I did so because the situation seemed to warrant it (capital requirements, perceived market size, achievable short-term revenue, etc.). If you’re absolutely dead-set on both space and bootstrapping, I’d start by consulting in that field. Get paid while you spot a problem and build a team to moonlight on it.
- markovian 7y ago
  By "bootstrap" I mean a way of self-financing part of the activities, finding a source of income quickly rather than relying solely on fundraising. Raising money is not a problem, but I don't see myself getting involved in creating a business that requires billions and billions of dollars in financing before generating a single cent.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    There are quite a few examples of space companies that meet that definition, have you looked at them?
    - malux85 7y ago
      It would be helpful if you named them
motohagiography 7y ago
The "spaceness," of the business needs definition. Maybe you build drones to defend asteroid mining claims and equipment, stealth communications for space prospecting, cryptographically sovereign networks for space supply chains, low gravity weapons and anti-piracy defences, solar sails, a navigation scheme and commercial beacon network, etc. The nearest term use case for commercial space tech is going to be regulatory arbitrage, so if you can deliver content and secure a physical space jurisdiction for a legal system, it will be the new off shore.
- markovian 7y ago
  In short, infrastructure. Where would you start?
  - motohagiography 7y ago
    Infrastructure doesn't cover it. Without a way to defend it, there will be no investment, so crypto and directed energy defences. Payments, identity, etc. Same as earth.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      It's space. Kinetic weapons will be just enough; one needs to make the shooting mechanism reliable in space.
soared 7y ago
You... don’t? There is a reason that Elon etc are the ones with bootstrapped space companies and very few others.
- fastball 7y ago
  SpaceX has raised $3.2B in funding[0]... they are far from bootstrapped. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies#section-overview https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te...
  - justanotherhn 7y ago
    They're not bootstrapped NOW. Say that in 2007 when they had the falcon 1. Obviously, they've gone on to raise money after showing that they can get into LEO.
crwalker 7y ago
Start and then sell a financial services company. Then build the space company.
ArtWomb 7y ago
1. Use Deep RL to predict stable 3D protein structures that would not normally occur in Nature 2. Simulate gravitational dynamics to winnow down candidate crystals that cannot be synthesized in terrestrial conditions because they would collapse under their own weight 3. Find novel applications for those proteins such as DNA data storage and computation 4. Design a prototype microgravity factory that operates at scale and exploits rapidly falling launch costs 5. Convince Big Pharma to invest using the rationale that space is the next big profit driver Best of Luck ;)
- markovian 7y ago
  Thanks, very interesting. Could you develop steps 2 and 4?
- adrianN 7y ago
  Each one of those steps is a billion dollar company.
  - sincerely 7y ago
    Sounds like a 5 billion dollar company in the making then! :)
- gewa 7y ago
  I always wonder if hackernews knows the difference between research and development. When it comes to biology, I feel like there is a real hubris fuled by fantasy headlines.
- ackbar03 7y ago
  Wait, which step is profit? Or is that step 0?
- nl 7y ago
  I hate to point this out, but: Find novel applications for those proteins such as DNA data storage and computation There's no reason to do step 2 you can do this. Ignore the microgravity requirement and make more profit by finding ones that can work in normal gravity.
PaulHoule 7y ago
Learn how to use mission planning software, for instance: https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission-design-tools https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission-design... with this you can help people spin tales of space project such as: "to build a sunshade, is it worth mining the moon?" Does it make sense to build the "Lunar Gateway?" Could lunar oxygen be delivered to LEO and HEO in order to retank SpaceX Starships? Pick up the tools to answer questions like that.
- amelius 7y ago
  Also learn to use formal specification tools like TLA+. Space companies will probably not use software without correctness guarantees. Especially if your software was verified by only a small number of people, it is likely to have bugs.
ISL 7y ago
Start a transformative web-commerce company, then transform it into the premier cloud-hosting company. Sell some shares. Pay a lot of good people to help you. Seriously. Bezos is the only major player to be playing only with his own money. I think everyone else (SpaceX, ULA, Virgin, etc.) all have substantial external investment. Space is expensive to get to. In general, you're going to need to pool a lot of capital and human effort. If starting small is a goal, finding great Cubesat applications seems like a good place to start (but you'll need enough money to get to orbit). It looks like there is a lot of competition, though.
redis_mlc 7y ago
I've worked in aerospace and have been reading HN for over a decade. Here's some adult advice, for both the OP and HN in general. Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire. Objects are too far, and lift is now a commodity. (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) So if you really want a career in space, go join an existing company or agency. However, there's a lot of smaller aviation-related projects that are equally challenging, but more affordable. Examples of recent remarkable aviation advances are: - Robinson Helicopter (world's largest-volume mfg) - Williams small jet engines (started in cruise missiles, now certified for civil use) - uAvionix ADS-B tailBeacon (first affordable ADS-B transponder) - Scaled Composites' projects. The whole reason Rutan used composites was to make wings 10x faster. You can do that too. There's room for anybody (who wants to spend their savings) on: - composite mfg. techniques - applying the latest in electronics (without competing with Garmin) - willing to navigate the FAA TSO process - installing ADS-B. It's literally a gold rush until 2021. - be like Mike Busch, the world's top aviation entrepreneurial mind: https://www.savvyaviation.com/ https://www.savvyaviation.com/
- growlist 7y ago
  > (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) I guess morale is low at Arianespace these days ;)
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Why would it? Ariane 5 is still doing reasonably good and Ariane 6 seems promising too. SpaceX needs a ton of launches to make reusable rockets financially feasible so.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - growlist 7y ago
      It was kind of a joke but come on, Arianespace's leaders have been pretty salty about SpaceX in public so clearly there is some jealousy. And as I understand it most of the oldspace launch providers aren't significantly cheaper than SpaceX even if latter operate their rockets in expendable mode.
LegitGandalf 7y ago
Millionaires play golf. Billionaires play space. Step 1. Make billions in something (not space) Step 2. Turn billions into millions with space
- trianglem 7y ago
  Isn’t spacex profitable? Starlink sounds like how someone would go about becoming a multi billionaire.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    It may be profitable now, but don't forget that SpaceX has been going for 17 years, has raised well over a billion in VC funding to date, and Elon has put more than $100m of his own money in. SpaceX is in absolutely no way whatsoever a company that Elon bootstrapped.
    - justanotherhn 7y ago
      Read this article and tell me this company was not bootstrapped by Elon. [0] Just because they went on to raise huge amounts of VC money doesn't mean anything. He was the one who took all that risk and nearly went bankrupt, not the VC's that now are about to reap the rewards. This is not to knock the VC money, those guys are awesome for believing in the mission. [0] https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-musk https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-musk
      - hef19898 7y ago
        SpaceX received billions of VC money on top of government contracts while Ariane and Co. got government contracts and government funding. So no, SpaceX is not bootstrapped. We also don't know for sure as SpaceX is privately held and not publishing financial reports. The one leak back up to 2017 wasn't that stellar.
larnmar 7y ago
Realistically you don’t, but... You’re definitely not building hardware without much money. Maybe you can build software? Spend a lot of time talking to companies that already operate in the space industry, find some unmet software need that you can somehow build a software solution for (better than the thousands of other software engineers who have already worked in the field for decades) and sell it to them. For instance, maybe you figure out a better way to write satellite management software. And then you sell that for a while (tricky, you’ve got very few possible customers and they’re all quite capable of copying what you’ve done if it’s so great) and eventually you get to the point where you start launching your own satellites. I’m not saying there’s a reasonable business model in there; but if there’s a reasonable business model somewhere it’s likely to look something like that.
nickparker 7y ago
1. Find a way to return cubesats from orbit 2. Sell your system to anyone who wants to do science where the payload has to come back, but can't get onto the ISS / wants to experiment in open vacuum not a station. 3. Find goods that can only be manufactured in micro-g which are profitable at tiny scale, make them with your returnable cube sats. Made in Space, FOMS, etc are trying to do this but you could iterate faster/cheaper on cubes than mucking with ISS bureaucracy. The window to do this is small and might not exist though. Eventually private stations will likely be the better option.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  > 2. Sell your system to anyone who wants to do science where the payload has to come back, but can't get onto the ISS / wants to experiment in open vacuum not a station. Probably a tiny market there's already the exposed facility on Kibo [0] on the ISS that can take a lot of experiments. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_(ISS_module)#Exposed_facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_(ISS_module)#Exposed_faci...
raven393 7y ago
If you really want to bootstrap it, start with toy/hobby rockets and drones and slowly work up. Alter the services you offer as you go eg: aerial photography, weather monitoring, engines etc etc till eventually you're launching small sattelites and stuff It's the kind of thing that'd probably take decades before you were realistically even beginning to look at space though
- chasd00 7y ago
  the amateur rocketry crowd has had large solid rocket motors for a while now but bi-propellent motors (event the most simple designs) are very very rare. If you could design one in the N impulse range and price it at < $2500 they'd sell like hot cakes. Then you could scale up the design to a bit more powerful and sell it to universities at around 10k a pop. The service contract to keep them running would be worth a lot o f money too. Eventually, you'd be able to sell a Karman line capable kit and that would sell like hotcakes to both the amateur rocketry and university crowd. There's a group on youtube working on nitrous oxide/methanol engine for hobbyists now. I think they're headed in the right direction although I would have done the combustion chamber differently. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEkE_gf1VxBngLugexHz2KQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEkE_gf1VxBngLugexHz2KQ
bradneuberg 7y ago
Here's some different resources that might help you tap into the entrepreneurial space community as well as help get you bootstrap, seed funding for your space business: - The New Space Conference (https://spacefrontier.org/newspace2019/ https://spacefrontier.org/newspace2019/), which alternates between being based in the Bay Area and Seattle. This conference is a great, accessible way to find out what is going on with startup companies attempting to do interesting things in space. - The NASA Ames Space Portal (https://www.nasa.gov/ames/partnerships/spaceportal https://www.nasa.gov/ames/partnerships/spaceportal) - A group based at NASA Ames field center in Mountain View that pursues public/private partnerships between NASA and the private sector. - NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL) (https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/ https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/) - A two month "research sprint" that takes place in the summer time in Mountain View, bridging machine learning and space science & exploration, as well as the public and private sectors. - NASA SBIR grants (https://sbir.nasa.gov/ https://sbir.nasa.gov/) - a great program that helps seed small businesses and solo inventors with seed grants for promising entrepreneurial programs that might help NASA and the general space economy - NASA NSPIRES (https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/ https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/) - NASA portal page to find out calls for contributors, that also have funding, that can help you get plugged into the space community and also get seed funding. - NASA Centennial Challenges (https://www.nasa.gov/open/centennial-challenges.html https://www.nasa.gov/open/centennial-challenges.html) - X-Prize like competitions that will pay out if you meet their guidelines and win in a particular area, like the Regolith Excavation Challenge which has been held several times, where the team who can best move simulated lunar soil in an automated way wins. The last winning team got 500k, for example, which is a nice purse to help bootstrap a space venture. - NASA Advanced Innovative Concepts (NIAC) (https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html) - Award program that funds very far-reaching, innovative space programs. These are always incredibly cool programs; here's the awarded NIAC grants for 2019 for example (https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests-in-18-potentially-revolutionary-space-tech-concepts https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests-in-18-potent...) - Luxembourg Space Agency (https://space-agency.public.lu/en.html https://space-agency.public.lu/en.html) - Luxembourg is a leader in private, mining oriented operations in space, and acts as an angel and seed investor in many, small early entrepreneurial space startups If you have more questions feel free to reach out to me on twitter at @bradneuberg
avmich 7y ago
It's been said "rocket science is not rocket science". Elon Musk put reportedly 90 millions his own dollars into Falcon-1. So it was enough a decade ago to spend $90 millions for Kwajalein launch pad, 5 units of Falcon-1, design, transportation, operations. Should we assume that today that ought to be cheaper - especially if we find a cheaper launch pad and be more lucky with at least first launch? Rocket Lab isn't that successful with it, but shouldn't it be possible at all? A recent new Japanese launcher was lighter than 3 tons. Now there are more modest companies, which don't put payloads to orbit, yet still qualify as "space business". I'd recall Altius Space Machines and Masten Space. You can add parts manufacturers for cubesats - parts like star trackers reaction wheels, RCSes, communications... They usually start with way less than tens of million dollars. Why a particular approach should cost a lot? Kistler Aerospace found that buying components for orbital launchers on the market is too expensive to survive, but may be there are other ways?
WilliamEdward 7y ago
There's a reason most of these comments are saying this is impossible. First you need some actual technical knowledge, like PhD level knowledge of some slightly innovative new space tech. I like to think one of the big boys in space money will be asteroid mining. So present a detailed and well researched pitch to some investor about how you would go about using a company to RnD this endeavour. Hopefully, they give you a lot of money. But you said you want little external funding, so, yeah, not going to happen.
paolord 7y ago
Look for some NASA/US Gov RFPs and open contracts for some low level manufacturing/sub-contractor work on their space missions(or sub contract work from prime contractors). Get the necessary certifications. When you do win bids, hire the right people, then provide the services, and money starts coming in. I'm sure there is a banker or financial institution out there that'll hand out funding to someone that actually holds a contract to NASA or a big defense contractor.
- markovian 7y ago
  It's actually one of the best solutions proposed here.
- ken 7y ago
  There are a lot of companies that set up shop right next to Boeing, and simply provide services to them. Probably all the other big aerospace companies, too. That sounds like a great way to get your foot in the door.
deepnotderp 7y ago
Satellites on a chip.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  It will be hard to get approval for that to launch (at least from the US). In order to be tracked to ensure the safety of future launches objects need to be much larger than a single chip. Smaller than that the tracking techniques used have trouble tracking the vehicles.
  - deepnotderp 7y ago
    Huh, that's interesting, can you elaborate? What are the minimum size requirements? Are they multidimensional?
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      I think they want things to be at least 10cm in all dimensions I don't have original sources though it was a while ago. Found this article. https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/controversy-over-us-nanosats-launched-by-isro/ https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/controversy-over-us-na...
    - liuhenry 7y ago
      At least 10cm in any dimension (i.e. a 10cm diameter sphere, or a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube). https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-81A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-81A1.pdf
randomsearch 7y ago
Develop useful tech for cubesats. Build a demo/prototype hardware box and go to a space conference after contacting people in the industry beforehand. Get an "in" with a small startup and work with them to build it on a satellite. Through a partnership with them find others, become a satellite builder. Get experience using the launch market and begin to learn about rockets. At that point, my knowledge runs out - but I think you'll need a few hundred million if you want to have a go at developing a rocket yourself, so that's how big your cubesat / satellite company will have to be.
hoerzu 7y ago
How do you make money with Satellites?
- SaintAnode 7y ago
  All of the data that you sell. E.g. Planet provides complete Earth coverage approx every 24h. Hyperspectral imagery, tracking ships/planes with specialised receivers, monitoring other space assets, running weather services, etc. That data is all worth HUGE amounts of money to the right people.
zeofig 7y ago
1. Make a PayPal 2. Space time
growlist 7y ago
I've kicked this about in my head also, because what geek wouldn't love to do it? I've come to the conclusion though that unless one is already a business and engineering genius with the luck of the gods, it's a ridiculous dream. With that said, a chap called (Sir) Martin Sweeting started Surrey Satellites in the 80s which went on to revolutionise the satellite industry and was sold partially to SpaceX, and then fully to ESA, so it is possible, but he was already a PhD-level scientist/engineer working in the field. Anyway here's a few ideas: 1. You could look at novel launch methods, i.e. centrifugal, rockoon, light-gas space-gun. On the latter Gerald Bull did reach space but needed a truly enormous gun 2. ...but imagine the know-how and resources required to develop a whole system like above that can get something to orbit. And quite apart from building the thing, how are you going to test it without become a lawyer to get the necessary approvals? So perhaps concentrate on one aspect of an example above that is transferrable to other industries. But even then to investigate materials that perform well at high temperatures, for example, it would help to already be a world-leading materials scientist, wouldn't it? 3. Fabrics. Looking at the latest NASA space suit I refuse to believe there isn't scope for improvement, and apart from that I suspect there'll be all kinds of novel fabric requirements. Again you might well find what you develop can be sold for earth-bound use 4. IP. Could you take an ARM-like approach and be merely an IP licenser? You could for example design modular launch systems and let others build them
droidno9 7y ago
Unless you're bringing a big industry name with you as cofounder, it's simply not possible. Just to get certified to do any work as a subcontractor would be in the $XXX,XXX range.
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
Define space company. You want to launch things? Hitch a ride on OP (other people's) rockets?
danpalmer 7y ago
Some feedback for HN: repeating the story of PayPal/Amazon and saying "you just need lots of money" isn't an answer here. That's exactly what the author put in the question, they know. Explaining _why_ the question is flawed may be a good answer, but otherwise think about the question and if you don't have a good answer, don't answer.
danenania 7y ago
Build software that improves some clunky or inefficient process common in the space industry, then sell it to the space industry. Voila, you now run a bootstrapped space company :)
bitL 7y ago
Start an e-commerce company from the scratch, grow it, make it automated, then use revenue to bootstrap your space company.
- markovian 7y ago
  How about a logistics company ?
  - bitL 7y ago
    Yeah, any scalable profitable company would do. I just have practical experience with exponential growth from automated e-commerce, but see no reason why that couldn't work for logistics or some other type as well.
losthobbies 7y ago
You could look at developing something that would make being in space more habitable for humans. Better spacesuits, better equipment. Maybe something in the cryostasis..eh..space?
woadwarrior01 7y ago
I have this mental model that I borrowed from the space industry. Just like how SSTO (Single-stage to orbit) is extraordinarily hard, although not impossible, I've always held the opinion that bootstrapping a startup in hard tech is similarly hard but not quite impossible. An less riskier approach IMO, would be the multi-stage approach, by solving a series of less capital intensive problems and progressively solving harder and harder problems while accumulating capital for the ultimate goal.
heidtn 7y ago
As someone who works for a space company that was effectively bootstrapped, there are 2 ways I've seen to do it. 1. Government Contracts - this is what my company did. Ground demonstrations to parabola tests to ISS payloads. It's a long hard road and has a lot of NASA bureaucracy, but we just won our first 100MM$ contract and only did one raise 7 years after the company was founded. 2. Build something a big Aerospace company needs - there's a lot of this these days. Company's like Gomspace are building tools for cubesats with minimal startup costs. This is the more independent route, but comes with the challenges of convincing a risk averse industry to use something that hasn't been tested in the correct environment.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DennisP 7y ago
Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. Be one of those companies. If it's something modest but really useful, you don't have to be a big company at first. Or, recognize that everybody's building lightweight, expensive, super reliable satellites because launch is expensive. Figure out how to build the cheapest possible satellites instead. Your financial constraints will give you a different mindset than people with serious resources.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  Living on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out how to re-create Earth's geomagnetic field and extend it around human buildings.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    Radiation on Mars is about the same as background radiation in Ramsar, Iran. Residents there have normal lifespans and cancer rates. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-full-of-radiation-and-why-im-not-worried/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-f...
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      This is great article, thanks for sharing! It seems we figured out for most of the things how to manage radiation living on Mars.
  - bloopernova 7y ago
    I guess that depends on what end effect of the magnetic field we are trying to replicate. If it's protection from radiation, then we have multiple avenues of research and action. We can use particular materials in our domed cities, we can build underground, and we could bioengineer plants and ourselves to better cope with radiation damage. We could even create a huge solar array or nuclear reactor in space and create enough of a magnetic field to deflect solar and extrasolar radiation. It's a difficult problem, for sure, but not an impossible one. If it's depletion of the Martian atmosphere, then once we've added a whole bunch of material to it, the depletion happens over millions of years. So there's not a huge effect even in the 1000s of years timescale.
notahacker 7y ago
Governments with space programmes will fund lots of research-type projects as well as purchase goods and services they actually use. But if you'd best pick something you can do for the million or two they might give you like niche software or analysing EO data or space imagery or lightweight materials rather than hope to launch a cubesat constellation or get to Mars.
jamisteven 7y ago
How does anybody bootstrap anything these days? Marketing and kickstarter!
- kristianc 7y ago
  Given marketing encompasses ‘only building things people want’ this actually isn’t too far off base.
friendlybus 7y ago
Space based solar like CassioPeia is an interesting format. Designed in a way that you can start with a smaller scale model to prove the concept and then work upwards.
parsimo2010 7y ago
I'd sat that you need to start small if you don't want to take on a bunch of investment money. A lot of magazine articles make it sound like anyone with $25k can get a cubesat launched, but it is clearly not that simple. Martin Platt and the AmbaSat project have given me some insight on how much work it takes just to design and get approval for really simple satellites. They post regular updates to their Kickstarter page. I think you can see the updates even if you aren't a backer: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-educational-space-satellite-kit/posts https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-ed.... Perhaps you should get in touch with some space industry insiders that know the regulatory environment and know what rules can be broken and what can't. Then also get in touch with people that have worked on space equipment before, because space is a complicated domain.
hos234 7y ago
Maybe useful- http://www.forbesindia.com/article/startups/we-are-seeing-isro-employees-quit-and-start-ventures-narayan-prasad/55187/1 http://www.forbesindia.com/article/startups/we-are-seeing-is...
smm2000 7y ago
Find country that need (but does not have yet) ICBM capabilities and pitch them that you can build rocket for them. They will provide all funding you will ever need.
- chasd00 7y ago
  that's a great way to end up dead by the countries who do not wish said country to have an ICBM.
  - jonas21 7y ago
    or, more likely, to end up dead by said country once they realize you have no idea what you're doing
mrfusion 7y ago
If anyone tries this, drop me an email. I’d love to get involved in any capacity.
- sheepybloke 7y ago
  Me, too! I'd love to help.
netman21 7y ago
I have thought of this my whole life. Well, since I was 12 years old, so 48 years anyway. I would develop small reaction engines for orbital maneuvering. Make them lightweight and inexpensive and infinitely customizable. Sell them to every rocket company and satellite producer. Make a whole family from hypergolic to plasma to ion thrust. Be really good at it. Establish a 100% reliability record. But, how to bootstrap that? Perhaps write the software for some other reaction engine company? Or create a simulator for orbital maneuvering?
wasdfff 7y ago
First, start something massive and unrelated to space, like a paypal. Then ride your dividends straight into your burn rate, securing idealistic investor money to go into the furnace along the way. Seriously, that’s the playbook for what you suggest. The only playbook. Anything else in these threads is going to be baseless presumption; if it were as the commenters said, they’d themselves be doing it and not sharing it online.
catacombs 7y ago
1. Find life outside the solar system. 2. Send message to them via the Sun. 3. Aliens receive message, determine Earth's location and send invading fleet to conquer the planet. 4. Discover the fleet via Hubble telescope and warn humanity. 5. World focuses attention on humanity's survival and diverts funds to spaceship manufacturing and jump starts the next phase of technological innovations. ... 450. Profit.
- zpeti 7y ago
  I see what you did there...
- DannyB2 7y ago
  > World focuses attention on humanity's survival We can't focus on global warming. Would we actually focus on an impending asteroid collision, or an incoming alien invasion?
  - catacombs 7y ago
    I think anything that is a danger to Earth that is not human caused would receive more attention.
j45 7y ago
Bootstrapping is a marathon, not a sprint. Bootstrapping is kind of like stacking bricks, except you mught be making each brick too. Sometimes you have to build the first thing to get to the second thing. Before developing hardware, I'd see if there's a lucrative software based problem in this area that could be bootstrapped to generate revenue to fund the next project. In a way SpaceX is doing their equivalent of this by building Starlink to generate ongoing monthly revenue that conceivably could be directed elsewhere.
ratsimihah 7y ago
1. Partner with Elon Musk 2. Use partner's capital and experience 3. Profit
chasd00 7y ago
Figure out a way to make LOX cheaper than anyone else on an industrial scale. I bet LOX production is a pretty sleepy business with few competitors. Use the money selling LOX to bootstrap the space business.
- Ancalagon 7y ago
  Now that's an interesting idea. Granted I have no idea how competitive/costly this market it, but I didn't think LOX was that expensive to begin with in comparison to other costs in aerospace.
  - chasd00 7y ago
    per Musk fuel/oxidizer costs make up the bulk of launch expense. If you could save launch providers 2% on LOX with equal service they'd buy it in a heart beat. It's like going to the next gas station to save $0.10/gallon gas. Granted your competition may just say, "ok now we'll sell at a 5% discount". Of course the devil is in the details, it may take hundreds of thousands of dollars in permits to transport it. Maybe you could invent a popup LOX processor like those popup concrete factories near big construction projects. That would be pretty cool.
jbms 7y ago
Move to Glasgow (like Spire did). It's got a bunch of companies making cube sats & cube sat software & satellite data analysis. Clyde Space will sell the bits to make a cubesat or even build it for you. https://www.aac-clyde.space/ https://www.aac-clyde.space/ Alba Orbital do the same thing at a smaller (& cheaper form factor): http://www.albaorbital.com/ http://www.albaorbital.com/ Add a sensor that you can sell the data from. Make a deal to sell the data. Use the money / guarantee of the deal to raise money to fund the satellite development and launch.
55555 7y ago
Not all companies can be bootstrapped, and even more shouldnt be. How would you bootstrap an oil refinery or a floating casino? I mean, maybe you could, but why not just become a person capable of taking the shortest route to your goal? Often, the reason you cant bootstrap companies is because opportunities are time-sensitive and your competition isnt bootstrapping. Imagine trying to bootstrap an Uber competitor in Uber's market at the same time as Uber. Even if somehow you could in the absence of Uber, Uber would destroy you.
keiferski 7y ago
No one has suggested this so far, strangely enough: start with content. Aim to become the place for excellent news, interviews, videos, etc. about anything space related. Or, go a fictional route - if George Lucas / Lucas Films wanted to get into actual, real space travel or space products, he's in an excellent position to do so. The brand is related and they've got billions to spend. I would bet that this happens sometime in the next ±100 years - imagine Disney having a Star Wars theme park in space. And you certainly don't need to be as successful as Lucas to build a fictional brand around space - even a smaller company could make space products if it has an audience. How to start from scratch: build up an audience, relationships with industry members, and an overall familiarity with the marketplace and potential opportunities. Develop a product, sell it to your audience, hire smart people, rinse and repeat. Your starting costs are basically zero, assuming you know how to write/create content.
- netman21 7y ago
  I like this. There are over 100 rocket companies. You could become an industry analyst and publish about them. Or become the Walt Mossberg of space. Eventually host a conference everyone has to exhibit at.
joshmarlow 7y ago
NOTE: The below suggestion is assuming Starship pans out and launch costs drop dramatically. The way I see it, there are 3 (overlapping?) ways of making money in space: 1) put something up there (like a satellite) 2) take something down (asteroid mining, space based manufacturing, etc) 3) do something in space you can only do there Here's an idea that falls into category 3 that I've been kicking around - space based entertainment. Maybe design a new sport that's only playable in space (or start with a currently popular one and extend it with space-only dynamics). You would definitely need some significant capital and it'll be several years before you could actually put some athletes in space. But assuming launch costs are cheap enough and human transport is reliable, I don't think it would require speculative new technologies. Possibly the biggest technical gap would be in building large enough structures for the sport. The work of Bigelow Areospace or Nanoracks seems to be going in the right direction.
- michalf6 7y ago
  You may want to look at Red Bull Air Race. It also was an extremely expensive novelty sport and they shut it down after a few years.
- DennisP 7y ago
  The enemy's gate is down.
  - joshmarlow 7y ago
    Exactly. I think Ender's Game is what got me thinking along these lines.
logfromblammo 7y ago
Start a non-space company, grow wildly successful, and use the substantial financial resources from that to fund your space company. Space is a capital-intensive industry. You cannot compete with those who can leapfrog you with one investment round or bond issue. Presuming you don't want to do that, or to become a primary launch provider, start by networking with people already in the industry. Move to space hot spots like Cape Canaveral, Huntsville, Houston, or Los Angeles, and start stalking insiders.
billconan 7y ago
I went to a Elon Musk's talk. He said he wouldn't have started spacex and tesla if he hadn't had the initial capital he gained through paypal. I want to start a robotics company and I guess I would start by selling robotic toys and kits.

123 points by markovian 7y ago

I am trying to find the ideal way to start a space business without immediately needing substantial financial resources. Create a space industry giant from scratch with little external funding.

PaulHoule 7y ago

Cubesats?

markovian 7y ago
For what purpose? Telecommunications?
- sfifs 7y ago
  Rich hobbyists - like the businesses that specialize in model trains

boznz 7y ago

Why not wait until people are out there already and sell shovels

greenyoda 7y ago
1. It may take many years before significant number of people are out there. 2. What kind of equipment or services would these "shovels" be? Is there any kind of equipment used in space that could be produced by a bootstrapped company that doesn't have billions of dollars in funding? Why would a new company in this business succeed when competing against established companies that already have experience producing such equipment?
- boznz 7y ago
  1. Plenty of time to prepare then. 2. frankly sir I dont have a clue! maybe a space escort service as space will probably be full of young men with lots of money :-)

troydavis 7y ago

Could you share why bootstrapping this business is attractive? I’ve bootstrapped many companies, but I did so because the situation seemed to warrant it (capital requirements, perceived market size, achievable short-term revenue, etc.). If you’re absolutely dead-set on both space and bootstrapping, I’d start by consulting in that field. Get paid while you spot a problem and build a team to moonlight on it.

markovian 7y ago
By "bootstrap" I mean a way of self-financing part of the activities, finding a source of income quickly rather than relying solely on fundraising. Raising money is not a problem, but I don't see myself getting involved in creating a business that requires billions and billions of dollars in financing before generating a single cent.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  There are quite a few examples of space companies that meet that definition, have you looked at them?
  - malux85 7y ago
    It would be helpful if you named them

motohagiography 7y ago

The "spaceness," of the business needs definition. Maybe you build drones to defend asteroid mining claims and equipment, stealth communications for space prospecting, cryptographically sovereign networks for space supply chains, low gravity weapons and anti-piracy defences, solar sails, a navigation scheme and commercial beacon network, etc. The nearest term use case for commercial space tech is going to be regulatory arbitrage, so if you can deliver content and secure a physical space jurisdiction for a legal system, it will be the new off shore.

markovian 7y ago
In short, infrastructure. Where would you start?
- motohagiography 7y ago
  Infrastructure doesn't cover it. Without a way to defend it, there will be no investment, so crypto and directed energy defences. Payments, identity, etc. Same as earth.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's space. Kinetic weapons will be just enough; one needs to make the shooting mechanism reliable in space.

soared 7y ago

You... don’t? There is a reason that Elon etc are the ones with bootstrapped space companies and very few others.

fastball 7y ago
SpaceX has raised $3.2B in funding[0]... they are far from bootstrapped. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies#section-overview https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te...
- justanotherhn 7y ago
  They're not bootstrapped NOW. Say that in 2007 when they had the falcon 1. Obviously, they've gone on to raise money after showing that they can get into LEO.

crwalker 7y ago

Start and then sell a financial services company. Then build the space company.

ArtWomb 7y ago

1. Use Deep RL to predict stable 3D protein structures that would not normally occur in Nature 2. Simulate gravitational dynamics to winnow down candidate crystals that cannot be synthesized in terrestrial conditions because they would collapse under their own weight 3. Find novel applications for those proteins such as DNA data storage and computation 4. Design a prototype microgravity factory that operates at scale and exploits rapidly falling launch costs 5. Convince Big Pharma to invest using the rationale that space is the next big profit driver Best of Luck ;)

markovian 7y ago
Thanks, very interesting. Could you develop steps 2 and 4?
adrianN 7y ago
Each one of those steps is a billion dollar company.
- sincerely 7y ago
  Sounds like a 5 billion dollar company in the making then! :)
gewa 7y ago
I always wonder if hackernews knows the difference between research and development. When it comes to biology, I feel like there is a real hubris fuled by fantasy headlines.
ackbar03 7y ago
Wait, which step is profit? Or is that step 0?
nl 7y ago
I hate to point this out, but: Find novel applications for those proteins such as DNA data storage and computation There's no reason to do step 2 you can do this. Ignore the microgravity requirement and make more profit by finding ones that can work in normal gravity.

PaulHoule 7y ago

Learn how to use mission planning software, for instance: https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission-design-tools https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission-design... with this you can help people spin tales of space project such as: "to build a sunshade, is it worth mining the moon?" Does it make sense to build the "Lunar Gateway?" Could lunar oxygen be delivered to LEO and HEO in order to retank SpaceX Starships? Pick up the tools to answer questions like that.

amelius 7y ago
Also learn to use formal specification tools like TLA+. Space companies will probably not use software without correctness guarantees. Especially if your software was verified by only a small number of people, it is likely to have bugs.

ISL 7y ago

Start a transformative web-commerce company, then transform it into the premier cloud-hosting company. Sell some shares. Pay a lot of good people to help you. Seriously. Bezos is the only major player to be playing only with his own money. I think everyone else (SpaceX, ULA, Virgin, etc.) all have substantial external investment. Space is expensive to get to. In general, you're going to need to pool a lot of capital and human effort. If starting small is a goal, finding great Cubesat applications seems like a good place to start (but you'll need enough money to get to orbit). It looks like there is a lot of competition, though.

redis_mlc 7y ago

I've worked in aerospace and have been reading HN for over a decade. Here's some adult advice, for both the OP and HN in general. Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire. Objects are too far, and lift is now a commodity. (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) So if you really want a career in space, go join an existing company or agency. However, there's a lot of smaller aviation-related projects that are equally challenging, but more affordable. Examples of recent remarkable aviation advances are: - Robinson Helicopter (world's largest-volume mfg) - Williams small jet engines (started in cruise missiles, now certified for civil use) - uAvionix ADS-B tailBeacon (first affordable ADS-B transponder) - Scaled Composites' projects. The whole reason Rutan used composites was to make wings 10x faster. You can do that too. There's room for anybody (who wants to spend their savings) on: - composite mfg. techniques - applying the latest in electronics (without competing with Garmin) - willing to navigate the FAA TSO process - installing ADS-B. It's literally a gold rush until 2021. - be like Mike Busch, the world's top aviation entrepreneurial mind: https://www.savvyaviation.com/ https://www.savvyaviation.com/

growlist 7y ago
> (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) I guess morale is low at Arianespace these days ;)
- hef19898 7y ago
  Why would it? Ariane 5 is still doing reasonably good and Ariane 6 seems promising too. SpaceX needs a ton of launches to make reusable rockets financially feasible so.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - growlist 7y ago
    It was kind of a joke but come on, Arianespace's leaders have been pretty salty about SpaceX in public so clearly there is some jealousy. And as I understand it most of the oldspace launch providers aren't significantly cheaper than SpaceX even if latter operate their rockets in expendable mode.

LegitGandalf 7y ago

Millionaires play golf. Billionaires play space. Step 1. Make billions in something (not space) Step 2. Turn billions into millions with space

trianglem 7y ago
Isn’t spacex profitable? Starlink sounds like how someone would go about becoming a multi billionaire.
- onion2k 7y ago
  It may be profitable now, but don't forget that SpaceX has been going for 17 years, has raised well over a billion in VC funding to date, and Elon has put more than $100m of his own money in. SpaceX is in absolutely no way whatsoever a company that Elon bootstrapped.
  - justanotherhn 7y ago
    Read this article and tell me this company was not bootstrapped by Elon. [0] Just because they went on to raise huge amounts of VC money doesn't mean anything. He was the one who took all that risk and nearly went bankrupt, not the VC's that now are about to reap the rewards. This is not to knock the VC money, those guys are awesome for believing in the mission. [0] https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-musk https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-musk
    - hef19898 7y ago
      SpaceX received billions of VC money on top of government contracts while Ariane and Co. got government contracts and government funding. So no, SpaceX is not bootstrapped. We also don't know for sure as SpaceX is privately held and not publishing financial reports. The one leak back up to 2017 wasn't that stellar.

larnmar 7y ago

Realistically you don’t, but... You’re definitely not building hardware without much money. Maybe you can build software? Spend a lot of time talking to companies that already operate in the space industry, find some unmet software need that you can somehow build a software solution for (better than the thousands of other software engineers who have already worked in the field for decades) and sell it to them. For instance, maybe you figure out a better way to write satellite management software. And then you sell that for a while (tricky, you’ve got very few possible customers and they’re all quite capable of copying what you’ve done if it’s so great) and eventually you get to the point where you start launching your own satellites. I’m not saying there’s a reasonable business model in there; but if there’s a reasonable business model somewhere it’s likely to look something like that.

nickparker 7y ago

1. Find a way to return cubesats from orbit 2. Sell your system to anyone who wants to do science where the payload has to come back, but can't get onto the ISS / wants to experiment in open vacuum not a station. 3. Find goods that can only be manufactured in micro-g which are profitable at tiny scale, make them with your returnable cube sats. Made in Space, FOMS, etc are trying to do this but you could iterate faster/cheaper on cubes than mucking with ISS bureaucracy. The window to do this is small and might not exist though. Eventually private stations will likely be the better option.

rtkwe 7y ago
> 2. Sell your system to anyone who wants to do science where the payload has to come back, but can't get onto the ISS / wants to experiment in open vacuum not a station. Probably a tiny market there's already the exposed facility on Kibo [0] on the ISS that can take a lot of experiments. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_(ISS_module)#Exposed_facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_(ISS_module)#Exposed_faci...

raven393 7y ago

If you really want to bootstrap it, start with toy/hobby rockets and drones and slowly work up. Alter the services you offer as you go eg: aerial photography, weather monitoring, engines etc etc till eventually you're launching small sattelites and stuff It's the kind of thing that'd probably take decades before you were realistically even beginning to look at space though

chasd00 7y ago
the amateur rocketry crowd has had large solid rocket motors for a while now but bi-propellent motors (event the most simple designs) are very very rare. If you could design one in the N impulse range and price it at < $2500 they'd sell like hot cakes. Then you could scale up the design to a bit more powerful and sell it to universities at around 10k a pop. The service contract to keep them running would be worth a lot o f money too. Eventually, you'd be able to sell a Karman line capable kit and that would sell like hotcakes to both the amateur rocketry and university crowd. There's a group on youtube working on nitrous oxide/methanol engine for hobbyists now. I think they're headed in the right direction although I would have done the combustion chamber differently. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEkE_gf1VxBngLugexHz2KQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEkE_gf1VxBngLugexHz2KQ

bradneuberg 7y ago

Here's some different resources that might help you tap into the entrepreneurial space community as well as help get you bootstrap, seed funding for your space business: - The New Space Conference (https://spacefrontier.org/newspace2019/ https://spacefrontier.org/newspace2019/), which alternates between being based in the Bay Area and Seattle. This conference is a great, accessible way to find out what is going on with startup companies attempting to do interesting things in space. - The NASA Ames Space Portal (https://www.nasa.gov/ames/partnerships/spaceportal https://www.nasa.gov/ames/partnerships/spaceportal) - A group based at NASA Ames field center in Mountain View that pursues public/private partnerships between NASA and the private sector. - NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL) (https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/ https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/) - A two month "research sprint" that takes place in the summer time in Mountain View, bridging machine learning and space science & exploration, as well as the public and private sectors. - NASA SBIR grants (https://sbir.nasa.gov/ https://sbir.nasa.gov/) - a great program that helps seed small businesses and solo inventors with seed grants for promising entrepreneurial programs that might help NASA and the general space economy - NASA NSPIRES (https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/ https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/) - NASA portal page to find out calls for contributors, that also have funding, that can help you get plugged into the space community and also get seed funding. - NASA Centennial Challenges (https://www.nasa.gov/open/centennial-challenges.html https://www.nasa.gov/open/centennial-challenges.html) - X-Prize like competitions that will pay out if you meet their guidelines and win in a particular area, like the Regolith Excavation Challenge which has been held several times, where the team who can best move simulated lunar soil in an automated way wins. The last winning team got 500k, for example, which is a nice purse to help bootstrap a space venture. - NASA Advanced Innovative Concepts (NIAC) (https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html) - Award program that funds very far-reaching, innovative space programs. These are always incredibly cool programs; here's the awarded NIAC grants for 2019 for example (https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests-in-18-potentially-revolutionary-space-tech-concepts https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests-in-18-potent...) - Luxembourg Space Agency (https://space-agency.public.lu/en.html https://space-agency.public.lu/en.html) - Luxembourg is a leader in private, mining oriented operations in space, and acts as an angel and seed investor in many, small early entrepreneurial space startups If you have more questions feel free to reach out to me on twitter at @bradneuberg

avmich 7y ago

It's been said "rocket science is not rocket science". Elon Musk put reportedly 90 millions his own dollars into Falcon-1. So it was enough a decade ago to spend $90 millions for Kwajalein launch pad, 5 units of Falcon-1, design, transportation, operations. Should we assume that today that ought to be cheaper - especially if we find a cheaper launch pad and be more lucky with at least first launch? Rocket Lab isn't that successful with it, but shouldn't it be possible at all? A recent new Japanese launcher was lighter than 3 tons. Now there are more modest companies, which don't put payloads to orbit, yet still qualify as "space business". I'd recall Altius Space Machines and Masten Space. You can add parts manufacturers for cubesats - parts like star trackers reaction wheels, RCSes, communications... They usually start with way less than tens of million dollars. Why a particular approach should cost a lot? Kistler Aerospace found that buying components for orbital launchers on the market is too expensive to survive, but may be there are other ways?

WilliamEdward 7y ago

There's a reason most of these comments are saying this is impossible. First you need some actual technical knowledge, like PhD level knowledge of some slightly innovative new space tech. I like to think one of the big boys in space money will be asteroid mining. So present a detailed and well researched pitch to some investor about how you would go about using a company to RnD this endeavour. Hopefully, they give you a lot of money. But you said you want little external funding, so, yeah, not going to happen.

paolord 7y ago

Look for some NASA/US Gov RFPs and open contracts for some low level manufacturing/sub-contractor work on their space missions(or sub contract work from prime contractors). Get the necessary certifications. When you do win bids, hire the right people, then provide the services, and money starts coming in. I'm sure there is a banker or financial institution out there that'll hand out funding to someone that actually holds a contract to NASA or a big defense contractor.

markovian 7y ago
It's actually one of the best solutions proposed here.
ken 7y ago
There are a lot of companies that set up shop right next to Boeing, and simply provide services to them. Probably all the other big aerospace companies, too. That sounds like a great way to get your foot in the door.

deepnotderp 7y ago

Satellites on a chip.

rtkwe 7y ago
It will be hard to get approval for that to launch (at least from the US). In order to be tracked to ensure the safety of future launches objects need to be much larger than a single chip. Smaller than that the tracking techniques used have trouble tracking the vehicles.
- deepnotderp 7y ago
  Huh, that's interesting, can you elaborate? What are the minimum size requirements? Are they multidimensional?
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    I think they want things to be at least 10cm in all dimensions I don't have original sources though it was a while ago. Found this article. https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/controversy-over-us-nanosats-launched-by-isro/ https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/controversy-over-us-na...
  - liuhenry 7y ago
    At least 10cm in any dimension (i.e. a 10cm diameter sphere, or a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube). https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-81A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-81A1.pdf

randomsearch 7y ago

Develop useful tech for cubesats. Build a demo/prototype hardware box and go to a space conference after contacting people in the industry beforehand. Get an "in" with a small startup and work with them to build it on a satellite. Through a partnership with them find others, become a satellite builder. Get experience using the launch market and begin to learn about rockets. At that point, my knowledge runs out - but I think you'll need a few hundred million if you want to have a go at developing a rocket yourself, so that's how big your cubesat / satellite company will have to be.

hoerzu 7y ago

How do you make money with Satellites?

SaintAnode 7y ago
All of the data that you sell. E.g. Planet provides complete Earth coverage approx every 24h. Hyperspectral imagery, tracking ships/planes with specialised receivers, monitoring other space assets, running weather services, etc. That data is all worth HUGE amounts of money to the right people.

zeofig 7y ago

1. Make a PayPal 2. Space time

growlist 7y ago

I've kicked this about in my head also, because what geek wouldn't love to do it? I've come to the conclusion though that unless one is already a business and engineering genius with the luck of the gods, it's a ridiculous dream. With that said, a chap called (Sir) Martin Sweeting started Surrey Satellites in the 80s which went on to revolutionise the satellite industry and was sold partially to SpaceX, and then fully to ESA, so it is possible, but he was already a PhD-level scientist/engineer working in the field. Anyway here's a few ideas: 1. You could look at novel launch methods, i.e. centrifugal, rockoon, light-gas space-gun. On the latter Gerald Bull did reach space but needed a truly enormous gun 2. ...but imagine the know-how and resources required to develop a whole system like above that can get something to orbit. And quite apart from building the thing, how are you going to test it without become a lawyer to get the necessary approvals? So perhaps concentrate on one aspect of an example above that is transferrable to other industries. But even then to investigate materials that perform well at high temperatures, for example, it would help to already be a world-leading materials scientist, wouldn't it? 3. Fabrics. Looking at the latest NASA space suit I refuse to believe there isn't scope for improvement, and apart from that I suspect there'll be all kinds of novel fabric requirements. Again you might well find what you develop can be sold for earth-bound use 4. IP. Could you take an ARM-like approach and be merely an IP licenser? You could for example design modular launch systems and let others build them

droidno9 7y ago

Unless you're bringing a big industry name with you as cofounder, it's simply not possible. Just to get certified to do any work as a subcontractor would be in the $XXX,XXX range.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

Define space company. You want to launch things? Hitch a ride on OP (other people's) rockets?

danpalmer 7y ago

Some feedback for HN: repeating the story of PayPal/Amazon and saying "you just need lots of money" isn't an answer here. That's exactly what the author put in the question, they know. Explaining _why_ the question is flawed may be a good answer, but otherwise think about the question and if you don't have a good answer, don't answer.

danenania 7y ago

Build software that improves some clunky or inefficient process common in the space industry, then sell it to the space industry. Voila, you now run a bootstrapped space company :)

bitL 7y ago

Start an e-commerce company from the scratch, grow it, make it automated, then use revenue to bootstrap your space company.

markovian 7y ago
How about a logistics company ?
- bitL 7y ago
  Yeah, any scalable profitable company would do. I just have practical experience with exponential growth from automated e-commerce, but see no reason why that couldn't work for logistics or some other type as well.

losthobbies 7y ago

You could look at developing something that would make being in space more habitable for humans. Better spacesuits, better equipment. Maybe something in the cryostasis..eh..space?

woadwarrior01 7y ago

I have this mental model that I borrowed from the space industry. Just like how SSTO (Single-stage to orbit) is extraordinarily hard, although not impossible, I've always held the opinion that bootstrapping a startup in hard tech is similarly hard but not quite impossible. An less riskier approach IMO, would be the multi-stage approach, by solving a series of less capital intensive problems and progressively solving harder and harder problems while accumulating capital for the ultimate goal.

heidtn 7y ago

As someone who works for a space company that was effectively bootstrapped, there are 2 ways I've seen to do it. 1. Government Contracts - this is what my company did. Ground demonstrations to parabola tests to ISS payloads. It's a long hard road and has a lot of NASA bureaucracy, but we just won our first 100MM$ contract and only did one raise 7 years after the company was founded. 2. Build something a big Aerospace company needs - there's a lot of this these days. Company's like Gomspace are building tools for cubesats with minimal startup costs. This is the more independent route, but comes with the challenges of convincing a risk averse industry to use something that hasn't been tested in the correct environment.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DennisP 7y ago

Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. Be one of those companies. If it's something modest but really useful, you don't have to be a big company at first. Or, recognize that everybody's building lightweight, expensive, super reliable satellites because launch is expensive. Figure out how to build the cheapest possible satellites instead. Your financial constraints will give you a different mindset than people with serious resources.

StreamBright 7y ago
Living on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out how to re-create Earth's geomagnetic field and extend it around human buildings.
- DennisP 7y ago
  Radiation on Mars is about the same as background radiation in Ramsar, Iran. Residents there have normal lifespans and cancer rates. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-full-of-radiation-and-why-im-not-worried/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-f...
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    This is great article, thanks for sharing! It seems we figured out for most of the things how to manage radiation living on Mars.
- bloopernova 7y ago
  I guess that depends on what end effect of the magnetic field we are trying to replicate. If it's protection from radiation, then we have multiple avenues of research and action. We can use particular materials in our domed cities, we can build underground, and we could bioengineer plants and ourselves to better cope with radiation damage. We could even create a huge solar array or nuclear reactor in space and create enough of a magnetic field to deflect solar and extrasolar radiation. It's a difficult problem, for sure, but not an impossible one. If it's depletion of the Martian atmosphere, then once we've added a whole bunch of material to it, the depletion happens over millions of years. So there's not a huge effect even in the 1000s of years timescale.

notahacker 7y ago

Governments with space programmes will fund lots of research-type projects as well as purchase goods and services they actually use. But if you'd best pick something you can do for the million or two they might give you like niche software or analysing EO data or space imagery or lightweight materials rather than hope to launch a cubesat constellation or get to Mars.

jamisteven 7y ago

How does anybody bootstrap anything these days? Marketing and kickstarter!

kristianc 7y ago
Given marketing encompasses ‘only building things people want’ this actually isn’t too far off base.

friendlybus 7y ago

Space based solar like CassioPeia is an interesting format. Designed in a way that you can start with a smaller scale model to prove the concept and then work upwards.

parsimo2010 7y ago

I'd sat that you need to start small if you don't want to take on a bunch of investment money. A lot of magazine articles make it sound like anyone with $25k can get a cubesat launched, but it is clearly not that simple. Martin Platt and the AmbaSat project have given me some insight on how much work it takes just to design and get approval for really simple satellites. They post regular updates to their Kickstarter page. I think you can see the updates even if you aren't a backer: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-educational-space-satellite-kit/posts https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-ed.... Perhaps you should get in touch with some space industry insiders that know the regulatory environment and know what rules can be broken and what can't. Then also get in touch with people that have worked on space equipment before, because space is a complicated domain.

hos234 7y ago

Maybe useful- http://www.forbesindia.com/article/startups/we-are-seeing-isro-employees-quit-and-start-ventures-narayan-prasad/55187/1 http://www.forbesindia.com/article/startups/we-are-seeing-is...

smm2000 7y ago

Find country that need (but does not have yet) ICBM capabilities and pitch them that you can build rocket for them. They will provide all funding you will ever need.

chasd00 7y ago
that's a great way to end up dead by the countries who do not wish said country to have an ICBM.
- jonas21 7y ago
  or, more likely, to end up dead by said country once they realize you have no idea what you're doing

mrfusion 7y ago

If anyone tries this, drop me an email. I’d love to get involved in any capacity.

sheepybloke 7y ago
Me, too! I'd love to help.

netman21 7y ago

I have thought of this my whole life. Well, since I was 12 years old, so 48 years anyway. I would develop small reaction engines for orbital maneuvering. Make them lightweight and inexpensive and infinitely customizable. Sell them to every rocket company and satellite producer. Make a whole family from hypergolic to plasma to ion thrust. Be really good at it. Establish a 100% reliability record. But, how to bootstrap that? Perhaps write the software for some other reaction engine company? Or create a simulator for orbital maneuvering?

wasdfff 7y ago

First, start something massive and unrelated to space, like a paypal. Then ride your dividends straight into your burn rate, securing idealistic investor money to go into the furnace along the way. Seriously, that’s the playbook for what you suggest. The only playbook. Anything else in these threads is going to be baseless presumption; if it were as the commenters said, they’d themselves be doing it and not sharing it online.

catacombs 7y ago

1. Find life outside the solar system. 2. Send message to them via the Sun. 3. Aliens receive message, determine Earth's location and send invading fleet to conquer the planet. 4. Discover the fleet via Hubble telescope and warn humanity. 5. World focuses attention on humanity's survival and diverts funds to spaceship manufacturing and jump starts the next phase of technological innovations. ... 450. Profit.

zpeti 7y ago
I see what you did there...
DannyB2 7y ago
> World focuses attention on humanity's survival We can't focus on global warming. Would we actually focus on an impending asteroid collision, or an incoming alien invasion?
- catacombs 7y ago
  I think anything that is a danger to Earth that is not human caused would receive more attention.

j45 7y ago

Bootstrapping is a marathon, not a sprint. Bootstrapping is kind of like stacking bricks, except you mught be making each brick too. Sometimes you have to build the first thing to get to the second thing. Before developing hardware, I'd see if there's a lucrative software based problem in this area that could be bootstrapped to generate revenue to fund the next project. In a way SpaceX is doing their equivalent of this by building Starlink to generate ongoing monthly revenue that conceivably could be directed elsewhere.

ratsimihah 7y ago

1. Partner with Elon Musk 2. Use partner's capital and experience 3. Profit

chasd00 7y ago

Figure out a way to make LOX cheaper than anyone else on an industrial scale. I bet LOX production is a pretty sleepy business with few competitors. Use the money selling LOX to bootstrap the space business.

Ancalagon 7y ago
Now that's an interesting idea. Granted I have no idea how competitive/costly this market it, but I didn't think LOX was that expensive to begin with in comparison to other costs in aerospace.
- chasd00 7y ago
  per Musk fuel/oxidizer costs make up the bulk of launch expense. If you could save launch providers 2% on LOX with equal service they'd buy it in a heart beat. It's like going to the next gas station to save $0.10/gallon gas. Granted your competition may just say, "ok now we'll sell at a 5% discount". Of course the devil is in the details, it may take hundreds of thousands of dollars in permits to transport it. Maybe you could invent a popup LOX processor like those popup concrete factories near big construction projects. That would be pretty cool.

jbms 7y ago

Move to Glasgow (like Spire did). It's got a bunch of companies making cube sats & cube sat software & satellite data analysis. Clyde Space will sell the bits to make a cubesat or even build it for you. https://www.aac-clyde.space/ https://www.aac-clyde.space/ Alba Orbital do the same thing at a smaller (& cheaper form factor): http://www.albaorbital.com/ http://www.albaorbital.com/ Add a sensor that you can sell the data from. Make a deal to sell the data. Use the money / guarantee of the deal to raise money to fund the satellite development and launch.

55555 7y ago

Not all companies can be bootstrapped, and even more shouldnt be. How would you bootstrap an oil refinery or a floating casino? I mean, maybe you could, but why not just become a person capable of taking the shortest route to your goal? Often, the reason you cant bootstrap companies is because opportunities are time-sensitive and your competition isnt bootstrapping. Imagine trying to bootstrap an Uber competitor in Uber's market at the same time as Uber. Even if somehow you could in the absence of Uber, Uber would destroy you.

keiferski 7y ago

No one has suggested this so far, strangely enough: start with content. Aim to become the place for excellent news, interviews, videos, etc. about anything space related. Or, go a fictional route - if George Lucas / Lucas Films wanted to get into actual, real space travel or space products, he's in an excellent position to do so. The brand is related and they've got billions to spend. I would bet that this happens sometime in the next ±100 years - imagine Disney having a Star Wars theme park in space. And you certainly don't need to be as successful as Lucas to build a fictional brand around space - even a smaller company could make space products if it has an audience. How to start from scratch: build up an audience, relationships with industry members, and an overall familiarity with the marketplace and potential opportunities. Develop a product, sell it to your audience, hire smart people, rinse and repeat. Your starting costs are basically zero, assuming you know how to write/create content.

netman21 7y ago
I like this. There are over 100 rocket companies. You could become an industry analyst and publish about them. Or become the Walt Mossberg of space. Eventually host a conference everyone has to exhibit at.

joshmarlow 7y ago

NOTE: The below suggestion is assuming Starship pans out and launch costs drop dramatically. The way I see it, there are 3 (overlapping?) ways of making money in space: 1) put something up there (like a satellite) 2) take something down (asteroid mining, space based manufacturing, etc) 3) do something in space you can only do there Here's an idea that falls into category 3 that I've been kicking around - space based entertainment. Maybe design a new sport that's only playable in space (or start with a currently popular one and extend it with space-only dynamics). You would definitely need some significant capital and it'll be several years before you could actually put some athletes in space. But assuming launch costs are cheap enough and human transport is reliable, I don't think it would require speculative new technologies. Possibly the biggest technical gap would be in building large enough structures for the sport. The work of Bigelow Areospace or Nanoracks seems to be going in the right direction.

michalf6 7y ago
You may want to look at Red Bull Air Race. It also was an extremely expensive novelty sport and they shut it down after a few years.
DennisP 7y ago
The enemy's gate is down.
- joshmarlow 7y ago
  Exactly. I think Ender's Game is what got me thinking along these lines.

logfromblammo 7y ago

Start a non-space company, grow wildly successful, and use the substantial financial resources from that to fund your space company. Space is a capital-intensive industry. You cannot compete with those who can leapfrog you with one investment round or bond issue. Presuming you don't want to do that, or to become a primary launch provider, start by networking with people already in the industry. Move to space hot spots like Cape Canaveral, Huntsville, Houston, or Los Angeles, and start stalking insiders.

billconan 7y ago

I went to a Elon Musk's talk. He said he wouldn't have started spacex and tesla if he hadn't had the initial capital he gained through paypal. I want to start a robotics company and I guess I would start by selling robotic toys and kits.